How to Try More Cases

Forbes, via Overlawyered, has an interesting article on Houston lawyer, Steve Susman’s efforts to covert lawyers on both sides of the aisle to try more jury trials… and make cases easier to try. How? Buy reaching stipulations on all of the dumb things lawyers argue about. .

Great idea that will never work in vehicle accident or med mal cases in Maryland. Why? Rule #1 of being an insurance defense lawyer for both in-house and outside counsel is don’t screw up by doing something outside of the box. For example, one suggestion Susman makes is to agree in advance not to depose each other’s experts. After a large verdict, every insurance company starts doing a CSI forensics witch-hunt. “You did not depose the plaintiffs’ experts. Why? Did you get permission for Jonathan P. Paperpusher for that decision?” Insurance companies are not promoting (in-house lawyers for car insurance companies) or doling out work to lawyers (outside counsel) who take outside-the-box risks that could backfire. Insurance companies give out a lot of love to singles hitters, but far less to home run hitters who occasionally strike out.

When you couple this atmosphere with outside counsel’s incentive to bill the file as much as they possibly can – a problem that the article drives by, but does not really address – you just have a dynamic that is not going to lend itself to creative deals getting done to make cases simpler to try.

Another thing interesting about what Susman believes in is that the goal is to “slow the shift toward arbitration and other less costly ways of settling fights.” The article does not give him a chance to explain why. I don’t necessarily disagree with this assertion, but every article that you read about mediation and arbitration holds these alternative dispute mechanisms to be the key fair and efficient administration of cases (and to world peace to hear the converts preach). Generally speaking, I think more jury trials are a good thing for plaintiffs but a bad thing for defense lawyers who are trying to avoid the spotlight of a bad verdict.

Search

Thanks for visiting the Maryland Injury Lawsuit Information Center. We hope you found some useful information. Please remember all of this is for informational purposes only. We are not your attorneys and this is not medical, legal or any other kind of advice. Please don't act or not act based on something you read here. For many reasons, that is just a bad idea. The best thing to do is to contact a lawyer and get information that is for you based on the fact and applicable law in your case. Our content could be outdated, incomplete or just plain wrong. We vouch for our advice to our clients but we don't vouch for the accuracy of this website. We are in Maryland. We have not handled any real pro bono cases in the last 5 years that were not personal injury cases. Our firm would not represent anyone if this website was found not to conform with the rules of any jurisdiction where a potential client may be located.

Personal injury lawyers handling serious personal injury truck and auto accident, medical malpractice and products liability cases throughout Maryland and the United States